Hello! For starters, I am not a student and have very little knowledge in Microbiology. Hell, I don't even know if I'm asking this in the right forum.

 

I work for a company that cleans skulls, yes skulls. We provide skulls and skeletons to museums, schools and universities all over the world.

 

My question that I have is very simple. We use warm water baths to clean a lot of the tissue off the skulls as well as to "degrease". Well, it doesnt always work as well as we want, and I'm convinced that it has to do with the bacteria that is forming in the water. I know that it is bacteria that is doing all of the work, but is there any ways to make it work better? Is there a bacteria that we can aim to create that will break down animal fat over the course of a few days? I use to work on koi ponds and there was a product called Microblift that we use to put into the ponds that would break down the natural debris and leaves in the pond. Would something like this work for our application? I appreciate any help that we can get!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maceration_(bone)

For the most part it should be fine if you avoid putting stuff in that actually inhibits bacterial growth (such as chlorine) or having too high of a temperature for instance. In any case the involved process is relatively slow and I do not think that even with higher bacterial content it will be that much faster. You might be able to accelerate it a little bit by seeding your sample with water which already has a decent bacterial content, though (from a good maceration process, for example).

Hello! For starters, I am not a student and have very little knowledge in Microbiology. Hell, I don't even know if I'm asking this in the right forum.

 

I work for a company that cleans skulls, yes skulls. We provide skulls and skeletons to museums, schools and universities all over the world.

 

My question that I have is very simple. We use warm water baths to clean a lot of the tissue off the skulls as well as to "degrease". Well, it doesnt always work as well as we want, and I'm convinced that it has to do with the bacteria that is forming in the water. I know that it is bacteria that is doing all of the work, but is there any ways to make it work better? Is there a bacteria that we can aim to create that will break down animal fat over the course of a few days? I use to work on koi ponds and there was a product called Microblift that we use to put into the ponds that would break down the natural debris and leaves in the pond. Would something like this work for our application? I appreciate any help that we can get!

sweet, can i buy a skull?